


breaking, not broken

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor, Semi-Explicit, Torture, and also rated for minor insanity, because that's sort of a thing that happens in torture, believe it or not, but at least it's still a one shot, but important to Jyn so it goes in the tags, claustrophobics beware, it is not a good time, oh and tons of swearing, the relationship is in the background, tumblr prompt that got out of hand again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:10:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12024933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: Prompt: "has the character ever broken a chair?"Jyn Erso has broken several. She only kinda regrets one.





	breaking, not broken

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled across a tumblr prompt: "Has your character ever broken a chair?"
> 
> And then I made it terrible, because I have issues and this is a way to cope.
> 
> So, warning for discussions of torture, but no guts or anything, I promise.

The problem with torture, Jyn thinks, is time.

Jyn is in the chair again. Her wrists and ankles are locked in tight to the arms and legs of the chair (and that’s kind of funny, if she thinks about it, arms to arms and legs to legs, and she and the chair have something in common) but they cut part of the back of the chair off so she can be leaned back (her back is leaning back out of the back of the chair, it really is very funny) and her head is tilted back (hah) and she’s getting a bit dizzy again but fuck it. The chair is better than the board but it’s worse than the box. Jyn almost likes the box – they curl her up into a little ball and stuff her inside, but jokes on them because Jyn is flexible, she knows how to bend, so she just curls up on her side and puts her head to her knees and goes to sleep and dreams of a time when she’s not in the box.

The other guy doesn’t do so well in the box – the big, shaved lad the Imps picked up at that checkpoint because he didn’t have the right scandocs, or he did but the Imps didn’t care, she can’t remember. She doesn’t really care either. But the big lad _is_ big, and tough and has scars and tattoos and a meaty jawline but they put him in the box and he broke in about two hours – maybe two hours. Because that’s just it, isn’t it? Torture has a problem with time, its always screwing it up. But this train of thought is getting away from her a bit, where was she?

Oh, right. Jyn was in the chair.

“Ms Kara Dantius,” the officer with the hatchet face says, and then again, “Ms Dantius, how are you feeling?”

He does that a lot, old Hatchet-Face. He likes to pretend he’s the Good Warden in the old game, and sets Squinty-Eyes over there up as Bad Warden. Jyn knows how the game is played; she’s supposed to start trusting Hatchet-Face, think he’s on her side. His favorite tactic is the It Saddens Me To See You Like This, but occasionally he’ll branch into It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way. Sometimes he even gives her the Sincere Eye Contact and Gentle Touch to the Hand. It’s fucking hilarious. When Jyn’s having a good day (hour, month, second, because the problem with time is that it doesn’t communicate well with torture), she’ll laugh at him, and tell him what a great job he’s doing. She spent some time (some torture) in the box to(day/morrow) and the chair isn’t as bad as the board, so she smiles as him and says “Wonderful, you ugly Hutt-fucker, how’s your bitch?” and jerks her head towards Squinty.

Hatchet-Face doesn’t like that much, he never does. Honestly, you’d think he would be used to it by now. Squinty just stares, and flicks the tip of the leather switch against the Fun Table Of Useful Tools. Yeah, alright, shitty name, but she’s been here awhile (forever, barely a week, who the fuck knows? Not Jyn, not Kara Dantius, or Liana Hallik or whoever the fuck is in the chair. The chair doesn’t know either – hey, look at that, more in common) but however long it’s been she’s running out of clever ideas (running out of time).

“I was disappointed to hear that you had a disagreement with Lieutenant Roberts last night, Ms Dantius,” Hatchet-Face goes on, like she knows who the kriff that is, like she cares, like she gives a name to the shadowy grey figures that come in and out of her tiny cell when she’s not in the box or on the board or with the chair. Like she asked the name of the grey shadow that tried to stick his chilly little fingers up her raggedy shirt while she bit down and bit down and bit down. She’d rather be introduced to the chair, come to think of it, hells, at this point they’re practically intimate, bound together and sisters in arms (legs, back). Not knowing it’s name is just rude, really.

“I bet you’re disappointed a lot,” Jyn replies to Hatchet-Face, though her words are a bit fuzzy. She had the board before the box, and her mouth isn’t quite working right yet. Still, Jyn spent years surviving in places where everyone would and could gut you on a whim, she knows that putting up a good front is important. So she smiles in Hatchet-Face’s general direction (fucker keeps _moving_ , it makes everything fuzzy, and her blood is pooling in her back and her ass and that’s going to be a bad thing pretty soon) and she adds, “but then you get what you give.”

“There’s really no need for rudeness,” Hatchet-Face sniffs, but Jyn’s guts have had just about enough and they chose now to protest. She dry heaves for a bit, her head still forced back so of course the bile chokes her, which triggers a panic response in her silly, confused body. Jyn notes it all with a vague sort of embarrassment, the way her limbs shudder and her mouth opens and closes. At some point (at some time, because time is a bitch that won’t help a girl out but won’t leave her alone, either) she finds herself rolling and then she’s on the floor and the handful of spit and stomach acid that’s been gagging her finally slips free to the dirty duracrete floor.

Jyn goes ahead and gags for a while longer than she needs to, though (because time may be a bitch but she’ll bargain with every drop of blood she has to buy a little more) and looks around through her good eye. Squinty is still by the door, silent, tap tap tapping that leather riding crop. Hatchet-Face stands with his thin back to her, and he’s talking again but she’s just about tired of the joke so she doesn’t bother to listen. The chair is on it’s side next to her, rolled over and looking as exhausted as she feels. It’s giving out a pitiful sort of high-pitched screaming, which makes her want to roll her eyes because honestly, what does a chair have to scream about? The big lad in the box, now he had something to scream about. He didn’t scream long, though, did he, his head crammed down and his shoulders pressed in so tight they were cutting off his air flow.

The screaming goes on, and it’s not Jyn, she checked, and anyway she’s still trying to breathe – oh it’s an alarm. “Detonation in the upper cells, all hands to battle stations,” drones the droid over the intercom, and Jyn thinks it’s funny that they chose a female droid voice, because they always do, don’t the Imps? No women in the upper ranks but the voice that tells them all what to do is always, always a woman’s. Sort of. A fake woman, with no soul and no thoughts, just the way Hatchet-Face probably likes them (ooh, that’s a good one, she’ll have to remember that for later, if there’s a later, if time doesn’t decide that the torture is done and runs off with Jyn in it’s clutches).

This is it, she thinks. Squinty is looking at his console on the Fun Table and Hatchet-Face is still snapping away, and Jyn’s crawling, flopping progress across the floor takes a small eternity (because time is torture) but the Imps stay focused on the alarm, on their protocols, on their screens.

The chair feels warm when she curves her hand around it’s arm (arm to arm and we’re both in this to-fucking-gether, pal) and it takes her a long long moment (hour, year, minute) to leverage them both upright, leaning against each other like old friends come home from the war. Except the chair doesn’t have a home, but Jyn does and if she’s not wrong (she’s not wrong) her home is currently blowing up the upper levels of this Imperial prison.

Squinty sees her first, because those little eyes are wet and runny but they still kriffing work, apparently. He comes for her with the switch, but something hard and heavy and explosive hits the world just outside the room (maybe it’s a hallway, she’s never really paid attention when they drag her from the box to the chair to the board because the in-between places don’t matter as much as where she ends up) and Squinty stumbles.

And Jyn grabs her chair by the arms (finds that place inside that doesn’t care if she makes it to the end of the war and marries it to the place that wants to go _home_ ) and lifts it above her head.

Squinty looks up just in time to get a rough wooden spike in the eye – a well-aimed kick, Jyn thinks with some pride, some fondness, well done, chair, you definitely deserve a name. Squinty goes down like a wet sack of blood and guts and Hatchet Face fires off a round from his blaster but he’s better at sweet talking than shooting (which is to say, not at all) so it goes wide, and Jyn grunts a bit as she tugs Chair from Squinty’s head. Chairman comes free with a sucking noise and Hatchet-Face fires again, but Chairmaster catches it in what’s left of it’s back (in this together after all) and Jyn’s thrown back but the room shakes and the door opens.

Hatchet-Face turns to face the new threat, which is a good idea because the man in the doorway looks very, very threatening, but not it's not a good enough idea (that’s Hatchet-Face’s problem, Jyn thinks, he’s never good enough and now he never will be) because Jyn is back on her feet faster than she really should be (time is, for once, for fucking _once_ , on her side) and she really leans into the throw.

Chairalina goes flying, airborne and weightless and free, and that bitch Time decides that torture deserves at least some reward because it slows, for one glorious second, and Chairheart the Third lands on Hatchet-Face’s back with a cracking noise that goes down into Jyn’s bones, splintering even as her sister’s wooden braces break against the Imp’s body.

“Jyn,” she hears, and then she’s going home because home is coming to her, and Jyn sags against Cassian with a sad smile and a final gesture to her fallen friend.

“We’ll have to leave it behind,” she tells him.

Cassian doesn’t look at Chairdonna, though he really should. It’s important to meet the family, and he’s missed out on the rest of hers, mostly. “Can you walk?”

“Sure,” she reassures him, and tries to point at the little pile of bloody wood on top of some Imperial rags but her hands don’t feel quite right. Well, of course, she was on the board today (yesterday, last year, next month). “It’s not _my_ legs that got broken,” and he still doesn’t look where she wants him to look but his face has that desperate edge it gets when he’s lost something, when he’s losing it. “It’s okay,” she tries to comfort him, “it was a good death. Will be. Worth something, anyway. To me.”

He doesn’t look reassured, but that’s okay, too, Jyn figures as he pulls her close and they leave the room. Just before she leaves, before time goes back to being a total little bitch and leaves them gasping for more as they run, Jyn looks back over her shoulder. It always hurts, she knows, to leave a friend behind, but it’s easier when you know they would have wanted it that way.

Because however long she’s been here (three days, she’ll find out later when the torture is no longer visible and Jyn and time understand one another again), however long it’s been, Chairington had been here longer, anyway.

 _Thanks for your time_ , she thinks with a bloody grin, and then Cassian pulls her through the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Whelp.


End file.
